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The Crossing
Logline: Refugees from a war-torn country start showing up to seek asylum in an American town. Only the country these people are from is America and the war they are fleeing is 250 years in the future. The local sheriff with a past, a federal agent, and a mother in search of her missing refugee daughter drive this allegory with a surprising conspiracy at the center.
Cast: Steve Zahn, Sandrine Holt, Rob Campbell, Jay Karnes, Simone Kessell, Grant Harvey, Tommy Bastow, John D’Leo, Kelley Missal, Marcuis W. Harris
Creators: Dan Dworkin (W / EP), Jay Beattie (W / EP), Jason Reed (EP), Rob Bowman (D)
Studios: ABC Studios
In a fairly dramatic opening teaser, scores of men, women, and children rise from the bottom of the ocean to its surface, many dying along the way. Where do they come from and where are they going?Cue a small fishing town on the East Coast, where Sheriff Jude Miller’s life gets very strange with the arrival of these refugees from the future.
ABC’s second pilot to use a custody battle to characterize its lead, The Crossing is solid from beginning to end. The craft is excellent, and I particularly enjoyed the writers’ intuition at knowing where to begin and end scenes. While the dialogue isn’t exceptional, it serves its purpose and sidesteps exposition capably enough. Thematically, this feels quite timely as well, using sci-fi to talk about migration and the refugee crisis the way Mohsin Hamid used magical realism in Exit West.
But most importantly, I was touched by most characters’ lives and situations in this pilot. There’s palpable sincerity in the way people interact with each other, and I was hooked in the gentlest way possible: I want to see how Jude redeems himself and protects his town from what are sure to be rough times ahead. Or how agent Roy and refugee Hannah’s budding romance evolves. Or where restless busboy Marshall’s search for the truth leads him.
Unlike NBC’s shallow, ultra high-concept Reverie, The Crossing follows in the footsteps of Stranger Things and Black Mirror, choosing character over plot, and subtlety over exposition. The result is a strong, emotionally engaging pilot that I hope gets a series order.
1 Comment
I think the “Ten Days in the Valley” page is mixing up two pilots: the logline and Paula Patton are from “Somewhere Between,” a different series. Ten Days in the Valley is about an overworked TV producer and is led by Kyra Sedgwick.